Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Alain Colcer]

I've begun doing some level 4 courier missions to raise standings with the Center of Advanced Studies, today i got one very interesting mission text:

The Space Gardens

You capsuleers spend so much time in the midst of mayhem and destruction, and you leave countless wreckages in your wake. Now, though, you and I have an opportunity to help sustain new life. I want you to transport some large crates of frozen plant seeds for me.

It will not surprise you that we are always trying to establish new colonies in even the most desolate parts of space. Colonization is always an exciting opportunity, not only for the settlers who dare venture out into space and stake their fortunes on some desolate rock, but for local entrepreneurs, businesses and politicians to support them. You won't hear of these, because your kind is so far up above piddly little local events, but it's a big deal for those involved.

Unfortunately, local support can't last forever. After the initial interest has waned, the citizens on those colonies have to fend for themselves. Sometimes they manage to create self-sustaining habitats where no outside intervention is needed. Occasionally they get lucky, and the outcome of their scientific experiments, ore search, or whatever else they were up to, makes them enough money that they can buy whatever they need off local orbitals.

All too often, though, we have to step in. Your cargo, once delivered to their colony, will hopefully enable them to bootstrap themselves to a self-sustaining life cycle. Colony life is hard enough as it is.

Which confirms one of my suspicions.....interest in new colony efforts is broad with many parties interested in executing it, but it is not a straight economic effort per se.....they don't see the Return on investment as $$, and has plenty of political support behind.

That does seem strange, since almost all the corporations that work in space behave in a hyper-capitalistic nature (the caldari state being the best example).

[Elmund Egivand]

This IS Gallente, where public image and rep is just as important as making money, right?

Not to mention staking claim on some resource-insignificant colony could be used as a launching point for frontier resource exploration and exploitation efforts.

[Aria Jenneth]

This IS Gallente, where public image and rep is just as important as making money, right?

Not to mention staking claim on some resource-insignificant colony could be used as a launching point for frontier resource exploration and exploitation efforts.

Even IRL, corporations justify charitable contributions and such to their shareholders as public relations and marketing. If everybody sees you as TEH EBIL MEGACORP, your sales suffer.

Asking a corporation to be anything less than psychopathic is a good way to be disappointed-- they tend to sink to their lowest common moral denominator (call it "team player syndrome"). The trick is to encourage good behavior without requiring real dedication to even the most worthwhile causes. Corporations, with maybe rare exceptions, do not have causes; they have shareholders, profit margins, and marketing strategies.

Hence (1) I don't entirely believe that, for example, Starbucks, is as environmentally friendly and social justice-oriented as it likes to appear. However, (2) I want to incentivize good corporate citizenship, so I don't actually give a damn whether they're wholly sincere as long as they follow through and act like the sort of entity they want to be seen as.

In the Eve setting, I'd note that Caldari megcorporations in particular are a weird mutant strain off of this pattern. They are for-profit entities, but they also are the Caldari government, so they can't operate with full traditional corporate antisocial personality disorder or their population will revolt (as recently demonstrated-- hello Tibus Heth) and they'll lose everything. I'd expect them to do a lot of stuff to keep their citizenry happy, even if it doesn't fall in line with "public relations" from any other empire's point of view. The result's probably less traditional corporation (Microsoft) and more zaibatsu or chaebol (Toyota, Samsung), only moreso.

[Elmund Egivand]

It is already implied that a Caldari megacorp does operate like a Zaibatsu: family of corporations with subsidiaries and everything.

Just like in S. Korea where Samsung not only deals with mobile devices, computers and electrical appliances, they also deal in cosmetics, insurance, pensions, etc. Essentially a cyberpunk-esque Megacorp.

Then again, the megacorps of cyberpunk fiction are modelled after Sogo Shosha conglomerate of Japan, of which the S. Korean Chaebol model is very similar to. They just haven't become *the* government yet (though they are involved in the political machine, just not yet legitimate governments).

[Aria Jenneth]

It is already implied that a Caldari megacorp does operate like a Zaibatsu: family of corporations with subsidiaries and everything.

Just like in S. Korea where Samsung not only deals with mobile devices, computers and electrical appliances, they also deal in cosmetics, insurance, pensions, etc. Essentially a cyberpunk-esque Megacorp.

Then again, the megacorps of cyberpunk fiction are modelled after Sogo Shosha conglomerate of Japan, of which the S. Korean Chaebol model is very similar to. They just haven't become *the* government yet (though they are involved in the political machine, just not yet legitimate governments).

Right. But the important distinction isn't so much how many pies they have their fingers in; it's how closely knit they are into the community and how they relate to it. Will the corporation, for example, simply close a factory because it's not profitable enough, and lay off everyone there? (Bearing in mind that being unemployed is hazardous in Caldari society.)

Before Heth & Co., I'd have said that most Caldari corporations would (Aria would explain this in terms of Gallentean influence among the Caldari elite). They learned a lesson or two from recent experiences, though: I suspect that more recently they'd start from the assumption that it's staying open, and look for ways to benefit from it doing so.

[Elmund Egivand]

Yeeea. In Japan if you are a member of a large corporation chances are you are staying there for good. They have this system where each individual employee essentially climbs a ladder. They are also loathed to remove their employees. If I recall they even send people to assess potential employees by visiting their homes (judge the merits of the prospective employee by their families). The turnover rate of employees in Japan is very low.

Of course, as ever there are exceptions.

[Veiki]

In my mind the way Caldari Megas have always functioned is by seeking to ensure a strong domestic services and consumer based economy that each one protects behind currency controls -- they issue their own scrip -- while at the same time exploiting foreign markets and economies for their own benefit.

The entire thematic element between the State and Federation has always been essentially one of the traditional democratic nation-state vs. the corporate non-state actor. If you're talking about colonial history between the Gallente and Caldari then it seems pretty obvious to me that the real reason for the secession probably had much to do with corporations fronting the costs for the expensive things like exploration, transport, terraforming and infrastructure development for colonies that would have to operate at loss until they had the population and manufacturing base to be viable and profitable.

The differences appear to be that Gallente corporations handed over administration and political authority to a local government while in the case of the Caldari it seems the corporations themselves become the de facto government authority in the colonies they founded.

You can just look at the current Apple vs. FBI case these days to see a similar friction between a traditional nation-state vs. a non-state corporate entity that has the economic and political power to simply say, "No", to a government demand.

The difference here is that the Caldari Megas have become states unto themselves without any real fixed geographic boundaries and have all the powers incumbent upon current nation-states. They can issue currency and set their own monetary policies, they can issue passports and visas in territory they control, they have their own armed forces, and their employees/citizens identify with the corporate brands with the same fervour and patriotism of a traditional nation.

They are completely different beasts to what one would consider as a modern corporation. In fact they probably share more elements with current Chinese command-capitalism than they do with any corporations we have today.

[Vikarion]

They are completely different beasts to what one would consider as a modern corporation. In fact they probably share more elements with current Chinese command-capitalism than they do with any corporations we have today.

Actually, I would argue that you're better off looking at - with suitable modernization - the "company towns" and structures of late 19th and early 20th century corporations in the U.S., at least before Heth, and then combining that with the Japanese versions of employment, corporate loyalty, and up-chain/down-chain responsibility.

Chinese "capitalism" is not a system of state corporations controlling the government, it's a central party and its apparatus essentially operating as a gangster family trying to juggle everything so that they can siphon off as much power and wealth as possible without setting anyone off.

[Elmund Egivand]

They are completely different beasts to what one would consider as a modern corporation. In fact they probably share more elements with current Chinese command-capitalism than they do with any corporations we have today.

Actually, I would argue that you're better off looking at - with suitable modernization - the "company towns" and structures of late 19th and early 20th century corporations in the U.S., at least before Heth, and then combining that with the Japanese versions of employment, corporate loyalty, and up-chain/down-chain responsibility.

Chinese "capitalism" is not a system of state corporations controlling the government, it's a central party and its apparatus essentially operating as a gangster family trying to juggle everything so that they can siphon off as much power and wealth as possible without setting anyone off.

Aka the Ford Company where Henry Ford is a modern Japanese and has a modern Japanese mindset.

[Veiki]

They are completely different beasts to what one would consider as a modern corporation. In fact they probably share more elements with current Chinese command-capitalism than they do with any corporations we have today.

Actually, I would argue that you're better off looking at - with suitable modernization - the "company towns" and structures of late 19th and early 20th century corporations in the U.S., at least before Heth, and then combining that with the Japanese versions of employment, corporate loyalty, and up-chain/down-chain responsibility.

Chinese "capitalism" is not a system of state corporations controlling the government, it's a central party and its apparatus essentially operating as a gangster family trying to juggle everything so that they can siphon off as much power and wealth as possible without setting anyone off.

US Corporations, Japanese Zaibatsus, Korean Kaesongs, and Chinese State Corporations all exist in a framework in which private institutions exist due to their relationships with governments -- either through direct subsidies or provision of contracts.

Caldari Megacorporations exist essentially as their own governments and States in their own right. However, like any State the Caldari have their elites and these are the top-level Executives and the families such as Seituoda and Hyasyoda who retain generational/dynastic ownership of stock and assets in the company. The objective then if you manage to get into the Caldari 1% club is to ensure and maintain your own social, economic, and political power through networks of patronage (Which for the Caldari is culturally acceptable due to latent concepts of familial ties and feudalistic past traditions) while seeking to prevent unrest among the wider populace.

Sometimes it works, and sometimes when an economic bump is hit like a recession that causes a contraction in available jobs, which in turn drives down real wages, it causes widespread social unrest and a blaming of the people at the top. Which can lead to disillusionment and to adoption of extremist thinking and ideology, which really explains how someone like Heth managed to get into power.

As for the parallels with modern China, it's more about the fact that a Megacorporation in the State can implement top-down economic policies that a corporation cannot. Feasibly, a Caldari Mega can set interest rates on their currency to advantage their own subsidiaries, as one example.

[Rinai Vero]

I'm kinda curious what this says about the push / pull factors going on in the Federation that incentivizes / forces so many people to become colonists.